But it is a great mistake. He does not see a twentieth part of the mischief that is going on; and what he does see he dares not take much notice of, for he is mortally afraid of the large boys.
There is a great noise in the room of shuffling feet and buzzing lips, but he pretends not to hear it.
Up very near the back seat sits Mary Lyman, or Polly, as almost everybody calls her, with a blue woolen cape over her shoulders, called a vandyke, and her hair pulled and tied, and doubled and twisted, and then a goosequill shot through it like a skewer.
Behind her, in the very back seat of all, sits Dorcas, the prettiest girl in town, with a pale, sweet face, and a wide double frill in the neck of her dress.
Patty's future husband, William Parlin, is just across the aisle. He is fourteen years old, and you may be sure has never thought yet of marrying Patty.
The twins, Silas and George, sit together, pretending to do sums on a slate; but, I am sorry to say, they are really making pictures of the master. George says "his forehead sneaks away from his face," and on the slate he is made to look like an idiot. But the color of his hair cannot be painted with a white slate pencil.
"I expect every day I shall scream out 'Fire!'" whispered Silas! "Mr. Purple's a-fire!"
In the floor stands brother Moses, with a split shingle astride his nose, after the fashion of a modern clothes-pin. So much for eating beechnuts in school, and peeling them for the little girls; but he and Ozem Wiggins nod at each other wisely behind Mr. Purple's back, as much as to say, they know what the reason is they have to be punished; it is because they are only nine years old; if they were in their teens the master wouldn't dare! Ozem has not peeled beechnuts, but he has "called names," and has to hold out a hard-wood poker at arm's length. If he should curve his elbow in the least, it would get a rap from the master's ferule.
"Class in Columbian Orator," says Mr. Purple, "take your places out in the floor."
A dozen of the large boys and girls march forth, their shoes all squeaking as if some of the goosequills had got into the soles.